Thursday, January 12, 2012

It might be January, but the weather outside is more like an extreme version of March. Yesterday evening's six o'clock news was full of warnings and tornado possibilities and live eye witness reports. Some of those very reports came from people living in the Salem community that I mention often in my Pilot Mountain manuscript. It's barely daybreak now and the morning news is just posting damage reports.

There were injuries, to what extent I don't know, but no deaths recorded. Homes destroyed, though. Trees on cars. Schools in Burke County are on a two hour delay, but is that enough? Will there be electricity so the children can write about their scary night?

Lessons learned at school today might not be straight from the teacher's well designed plan book, but they will be remembered. And some day, fifty years from now, a story catcher will gather today's stories in her net.

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About the Pilot Mountain Schoolhouse Project

Tom Brittain bought a schoolhouse.

He was tossing the clutter and peeling the splinters and thinking of future possibilities when the phenomena started.
The locals dropped by.
They’d point to a corner and say “That’s where…” or toward the principal’s office and say “That’s when….” Tom Brittain would strip away another layer and the locals would say, “That’s how….” When the schoolhouse was exposed to the bare bones, the locals finally said, “That’s why….”

So Tom Brittain called for a storycatcher and she listened and collected their stories…

Lessons Learned

The Story of Pilot Mountain School

Fly Fishermen of Caldwell County

North Carolina Life Stories

Called to the Mountains

The Story of Jean L. Frese

Wheels and Moonshine

The Stories and Adventures of Claude B. Minton

Local Histories New on the Market

2017

Back in the Time

Medicine, Education and Life in the Isolation of Western North Carolina's Spring Creek